Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has ruled Tunisia for 23 years, racking up five Soviet-style electoral victories with more than 90% of the vote. For the west he has been a convenient if uncomfortable ally, a bulwark against the "green peril" of Islamism and a steward of modest economic development.

But at home, revulsion for the regime's excesses – in the presidential palace and the interior ministry's torture chambers – has festered for years. Ben Ali is known to his long-suffering subjects as "Ben A Vie" ("president for life"), though last night that nickname looked to have been superseded by events.

That revulsion was aggravated by last month's revelations on WikiLeaks about the extent of the Tunisian first family's extravagance, as a generation languished in joblessness and ordinary families struggled to make ends meet.

A secret dispatch by the US ambassador in Tunis related the opulence of a regime that freighted in ice cream from St Tropez and kept a tiger that ate four chickens a day.

"Corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are now keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising. Tunisians intensely dislike, even hate, first lady Leila Trabelsi and her family. In private, regime opponents mock her; even those close to the government express dismay at her reported behaviour. Meanwhile, anger is growing at Tunisia's high unemployment and regional inequities. As a consequence, the risks to the regime's long-term stability are increasing."

Ben Ali was part of the resistance to French colonial rule in his youth, for which he was imprisoned. He studied in France, served in the military and the diplomatic service before becoming interior minister in 1986, a brief stepping stone on the way to the prime minister's office and, in 1987, the presidency.

The sudden flight of ousted president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali has left a mood of confusion and fear. Soldiers and tanks controlled central Tunis but armed gangs continued to loot and burn amid fears that the ex-dictator's militia were behind the violence